Performance of student software development teams: the influence of personality and identifying as team members

Summary

This study examined why some university software engineering project teams outperform others, drawing on two traditions: aggregate personality (particularly team-average conscientiousness and agreeableness) and self-categorisation theory (identifying as a team member and the team's shared performance norms). Around eighty students completing a software project in small teams were surveyed and their team outcomes assessed. Higher team conscientiousness predicted stronger performance, as did the degree to which members identified with their team and held a norm favouring high performance. The findings suggest that both dispositional make-up and social-identity processes jointly shape team achievement. The authors argue that attending to personality composition alongside team identification and performance norms can help foster more effective student engineering teams.